Page 16 of Wedding Season
The thought of what might happen if she didn’t face her future had curled around the edges of her consciousness like smoke from one of her mother’s Marlboro Lights whispering through the kitchen late at night. She’d been fragile—only a few weeks sober—and she’d walked out to the ocean late one night and entered the cold waves.
Goose bumps had erupted across her skin, more from the understanding of what she was doing than the bite of the salt water.
A wave had crashed over her and she’d gone down for a moment, sputtering and choking as she tried to catch her breath. Tried not to drag in salt water along with the air.
The moment has been a wake-up call. The ocean communicating its power made her aware of the lack of hers. But instead of feeling less, Mariella’s appreciation of her place as nothing more than a fleck of humanity had been a comfort. She’d spent so long trying to convince herself and everyone around her that she was big and important and something other than the small girl with the strung-out mom from the seedy side of Philadelphia.
She’d managed to drag herself from the dark water, which had been the start of her reinvention. Even though she understood and respected the power of the ocean, she hadn’t gone back in. Not even after moving to this town. A part of her respect came with the need to stay away. Not to get sucked back into the temptation of taking care of her problems in a way that was final.
She was different, of course. Stronger and more resilient. At least she hoped so. So why did she come here now after her run-in with Heather and then Alex?
It was a sunny spring day although a blessed cool front had come through town. The beach was dotted with families flying kites and a few intrepid kids splashing in the frigid water of the Atlantic. Once summer came, this stretch of sand would be a canopy of color with bright umbrellas and families in all varieties of swimwear enjoying a break from the heat.
Maybe Mariella would come back then but not for the same purpose that she’d entered the dark ocean in Mexico. She wasn’t that person any longer—or so she told herself—even though she still feared the water might reveal something different about her.
Would she want to confront her weakness again? Would she be driven so low to feel that she was out of options other than the pull of the waves?
She approached the shoreline, shaking off those difficult thoughts.
Emma had been right. She’d built a life here, a good one. She’d be a fool to run away, although foolhardy felt like it was part of her inner makeup. She sucked in a breath as the cold water splashed over her feet and receded again.
She continued to stand in that spot until her body acclimated to the temperature. The tide streamed in and out with its endless rhythm. Sometimes a wave crashed closer to the edge and hit her harder, water splashing against her shins and soaking the edges of the long shorts she wore.
Sometimes the force of it would peter out before it got to her and she’d be left almost yearning for that cold punch of water. She wasn’t sure how long she stood there. Long enough that the sun heated the shadowy places inside her. While her lower body still felt the cold from the water, her upper body was warm and languid.
She’d brought a towel with her. Maybe she would sunbathe for a little bit although she knew better. A woman in her thirties couldn’t afford to spend time under the bright sun for the damage it would do to her skin. At this point, Mariella couldn’t bring herself to care. She returned the wave of a boy who ran past splashing through the water and then turned and came face-to-face with Heather.
It seemed strange suddenly that she didn’t know the girl’s last name. Her daughter’s last name.
“Are you stalking me now?” she demanded as heat infused her cheeks. Rudeness was a comfortable defense mechanism for her, and she needed all the fortification she could get to combat the emotions rushing through her. How was she supposed to survive living in the same town as the child she’d given up?
The girl wore a sports bra and athletic shorts, her blond hair pulled back into a high ponytail, sweat glistening on her arms.
“In your dreams,” she answered with a sneer.
Pride bloomed in Mariella’s chest. She took no credit for this young woman but appreciated her badass attitude nonetheless. And the truth was she had dreamed about her daughter many times over the years. The child was always a faceless, shadowy entity running at the edges of Mariella’s mind as if determined to stay just out of reach.
Even in her wildest imaginings, she couldn’t have conjured a moment like this. A wave pooled around her ankles at the same time Heather lifted a hand with ragged nails to her mouth and then dropped it again, her fist clenching. Mariella gasped, more from the familiarity of that gesture than the shock of the cold water. Biting her nails was a habit she’d had to work hard to overcome, and she’d spent most of her childhood and teenage years with her nails chewed to the quick.
“Are you going to run away and then puke your guts out?” The girl lifted a brow.
Oh, yes. Mariella’s heart knew this young woman.
“That had nothing to do with you,” she said instead of hissing out the snide remark that was on the tip of her tongue. “It’s just something that happens to me.”
“Right,” Heather agreed. “Sort of like an unwanted pregnancy and giving away your daughter to strangers. Also just something that happened.”
A bead of sweat dripped between Mariella’s shoulder blades. She couldn’t blame Heather for thinking that. Of course she would. No one could know what that decision had cost Mariella.
There was no explaining how the moments after the nurse gently lifted her baby from her arms had broken her in ways that could never be patched together.
She wasn’t going to share that. Chances were Heather wouldn’t care either way. And it would only make Mariella more vulnerable to the girl’s animosity when it already felt as though her heart was on full display. The solid walls she’d built around it were no deterrent for her guilt and the regrets from the past.
“Have you had a good life?” she asked. When Heather continued to stare at her, Mariella wondered if the question had been lost on the wind that seemed so ever-present along the shore. But it was the one thing she wanted to know most of all. Truly, it was the only thing that mattered.
“My parents,” Heather answered finally, “are amazing. They gave me everything, and I’m so lucky to have them.” She was practically shouting now, and it seemed like it had less to do with being heard over the wind than some sort of tide of emotion that was also tugging on her the same way it did Mariella.
“You don’t even matter to me.” Heather practically spat the words in Mariella’s face.
